News Releases – Page 6 – Griffin Poetry Prize

Glyn Maxwell & Poet Laureate Simon Armitage in Conversation

Glyn Maxwell & Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage in conversation – Expect new poetry readings, laughter, anecdotes & poetic insight.

To celebrate Poetry School’s 25th Anniversary and our move into the wonderful Somerset House Exchange, Poetry School is launching a series of in-depth, unique conversations with some of the leading poets of the world facilitated by Poetry School Head of Studies and MA tutor Glyn Maxwell. We are thrilled to launch these unique events with the UK Poet Laureate Simon Armitage in conversation at Somerset House. Join us virtually for an hour of readings (new work included!),wisdom, laughter and insight as two of poetry’s most experienced voices reminisce, shoot the breeze and let you in on the secrets they have learned over the course of their decades at the top of their game. We look forward to seeing you.

Tickets are available upon donation: Please give what you can to attend this fantastic event – all funds from tickets will go towards our bursary scheme and outreach programme to provide opportunities and support for marginalised or disadvantaged writers. We would like to say a HUGE thank you for your support in this vital area of our work. Sally and Poetry School Team.

League of Canadian Poets – New Member Reading

Featuring New LCP members from British Columbia who have joined the League from 2020 – Present, including Lesley-Anne Evans, Geoff Inverarity, Heather Haley, Rayya Liebich, Frankie McGee, Bronwen Tate, Marie Metaphor Specht and Johnny D. Trinh.

Connect with the poetry community, get inspired, and have fun!

Learn more about the New Member Reading Series: poets.ca/member-readings/

The Polyglot: Monthly Multilingual Art Lab

The Polyglot and Laberinto Press are teaming up to offer a monthly Multilingual Art Lab!

This is a space where writers, artists, and translators share their experiments with one another. Similar to a tertulia or salon, we will gather to discuss, learn, and enjoy each other’s company. The lab was born out of overwhelming community response to The Polyglot’s past events, as well as writing workshops in March 2019 and February 2021.

The Multilingual Art Lab includes four Zoom gatherings that will take place on the first Saturday of the month at 11am MST or 7pm CET and run for approximately two hours.

Los detalles:

This lab runs on a Pay What You Can Model—from $0 to $80 CAD. You must choose an option to register and receive the Zoom link. Any contribution helps The Polyglot stay afloat in these challenging pandemic times. In return, you will have access to a nourishing community of multilingual creatives, from whom you will receive feedback, advice, resources, and virtual abrazos. But we also understand that this may be the most challenging year for you, so we do not want money to be a barrier.
Once you register, there is no pressure to attend every lab. If you have to miss a session, come a little late, or duck out early, please do not stress. This is a relaxed and supportive online environment.
Our Multilingual Art Lab is open to any artist, writer, or translator from anywhere in the world.
Come ready to share your art. That can be: poetry, flash fiction, translations, paintings, collages,, songs, dance, and more. While English might be the main “carrier” language of our lab, you can share your artwork in any language and we will honour and learn from it.
Be kind, respectful, and mindful of others’ time and work. Only provide feedback when asked. Be clear about what you’re looking for: constructive editing feedback, publishing/exhibition advice, translation advice, a dialogue based on questions you have, resources on a certain topic, etc.
The lab seeks to become an inclusive, accessible, and empowering space for polyglot writers, translators, and artists. We welcome feedback to better serve our creative community and make the lab more equitable. Please write to us at thepolyglotmagazine@gmail.com. However, any oppressive language or behaviours (i.e. racist, linguicist, misogynist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, classist, ageist, xenophobic, etc.) will not be tolerated.

Poetry in Union Experience – League of Canadian Poets

Poetry in Union Experience – Custom Spontaneous Poems for you and yours

From February 5 to 14, 2022

Cost: $20 per poem

Experience Time: 20 minutes

Book your experience today: poets.ca/poetryinunion

Poetry in Union is the perfect way to celebrate a milestone, a loved one, or yourself. Receive a one-of-a-kind poem written for you in the moment by a professional poet!

February 4, 2022

He thinks I should be glad because they

Aisha Sasha John

Like the idea of Aisha.

I am not the idea of Aisha.

I am Aisha.

You I know you

Love the idea of Aisha.

I am not the idea of Aisha.

I am Aisha.

Notes on the Poem
Our Poem of the Week is "He thinks I should be glad because they," from the 2018 Griffin-shortlisted collection I have to live. (McClelland & Stewart) by poet and performer Aisha Sasha John. 

Of the collection the judges said: “Aisha Sasha John’s I have to live. shows what poetry can become when stripped of prettiness and polite convention — when in survival mode. Spontaneous, its subjects unposed, its language unrehearsed, each poem has the effect of being taken with a Polaroid camera. John writes poems that are resistant to overwrought aesthetics, poems that have popular appeal yet are uninhibited by audience, poems whose casual demeanor belies their fight against casualty. They wind their way into us like a chorus.” 

Watch Aisha Sasha John read from this collection at Koerner Hall here.

Aisha Sasha John’s most recent collection is TO STAND AT THE PRECIPICE ALONE AND REPEAT WHAT IS WHISPERED (Ugly Duckling Press).

Translation Talks

The Griffin Poetry Prize is excited to launch Translation Talks, a series of conversations about translation and poetry where shortlisted and winning authors are invited to discuss their craft in company of other poets and translators.

Join us on Thursday, January 27th at 7pm ET on Zoom for our first Translation Talks, featuring Khaled Mattawa in conversation with Sarah Riggs.

Khaled Mattawa was a finalist for the 2017 International Griffin Poetry Prize for his translation of Adonis: Selected Poems (Yale University Press, 2016). Sarah Riggs was the 2020 International Griffin Poetry Prize winner for her translation of Etel Adnan’s Time (Nightboat Books, 2019).

Image featured in banner: Sarah Riggs, “Missives to Etel, #5” ink and pencil on paper, December 2021

Translation Talks: Khaled Mattawa and Sarah Riggs image

Khaled Mattawa is assistant professor of language and literature at the University of Michigan. Born in Benghazi, Libya, he emigrated to the United States as a teenager. He is the author of several books of poetry, including Tocqueville (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2010), and has translated numerous volumes of Arab poetry, including Adonis’s Concerto al-Quds (Yale University Press, 2017), Shepherd of Solitude: Selected Poems of Amjad Nasser (Banipal Books, 2009), and Miracle Maker: Selected Poems of Fadhil Al-Azzawi (Boa Editions, 2003). Mattawa has been awarded several Pushcart Prizes and the PEN Award for Literary Translation, in addition to a translation grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, the Alfred Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, and a MacArthur fellowship. He served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2014 to 2020.

Sarah Riggs is a poet, author most recently of a collection of letter poems, The Nerve Epistle (Roof Books, 2021, New York) and of Murmurations (Apic, 2021, Algeria). Riggs received a 1913 Poetry Prize for her poetry book Pomme & Granite, as well as the 2020 International Griffin Poetry Prize for Etel Adnan’s Time (Nightboat Books, 2019) which she translated from the French. Riggs’ drawings, paintings and films have been shown internationally, including in France and the U.S., where she has lived, in Montreal where her mother is from, and in Morocco, where her life partner Omar Berrada is from. Together in 2004, Riggs and Berrada founded Tamaas, which means “contact” in Arabic, an international arts organization with a focus on earth arts justice which runs an annual poetry translation seminar and publication, as well as the podcast Invitation to the Species, projects through art, dance, and poetry, and is currently producing Alystyre Julian’s film Outrider on and with poet and performer Anne Waldman. Find out more at tamaas.org and on Riggs’ website www.sarahriggs.org.

The event will run for approximately one hour on Zoom and will be hosted by Griffin Poetry Prize social media director Mirene Arsanios and editorial director Adriana Oni??. You will receive the Zoom link after registering.

If you have any questions, please contact Mirene Arsanios at socialmedia@grififnpoetryprize.com and Adriana Oni?? at editorialdirector@griffinpoetryprize.com.

January 26, 2022

Not a Star

Khaled Mattawa translated from the Arabic written by Adonis

Not a star, not a prophet’s inspiration
not a pious face worshipping the moon,
here he comes like a pagan spear
invading the land of alphabets
bleeding, raising his hemorrhage to the sun.
Here he comes wearing the stone’s nakedness
thrusting his prayers into caves.
Here he comes
embracing the weightless earth.

Notes on the Poem
Our Poem of the Week features our first Translation Talks guest, Khaled Mattawa, shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2011 for Adonis: Selected Poems (Yale University Press), translated from the Arabic written by Adonis.

Of the collection the judges said: “Adonis, along with Saadi Yousef and Mahmoud Darwish, has helped to bring into being modern Arabic poetry. Masterfully translated by Khaled Mattawa, his Selected Poems show a range comparable to Lorca’s, stretching from the sensuous to the political. When he left the Syrian socialist party in the early Sixties, Adonis left all traditional politics behind only to become committed to deep cultural transformation through the creative energies of poetry, in a quest for what could be called an Arabic modernism. In the case of his poetry, this new mode takes the form of a combination of metaphysics, interiority and solidarity, a hybrid present as well in the poetry of Rumi and the thought of Ibn Arabi.”

Don’t miss Khaled Mattawa’s conversation with Sarah Riggs on Thursday, January 27th at 7pm ET. Translation Talks is a new series of conversations about translation and poetry where shortlisted and winning authors are invited to discuss their craft in company of other poets and translators. Register here.

Deadline to submit to Room Magazine

We invite you to submit your unpublished work to the “Audacity” issue of Room—an issue we hope will dare to risk normalcy and politeness in the name of bold and uncompromising truth.

“Audacity” will be edited by Molly Cross-Blanchard (author of Exhibitionist) and assistant edited by Karmella Cen Benedito De Barros, with shadow editors Ellen Chang-Richardson and Michelle Ha. The team will be looking for poetry, prose, black-and-white art and photographs, and mixed-genre/hybrid writing that goes against convention and tradition in favour of the uncensored, unfiltered, and decolonial.

We want you to show us what “Audacity” means to you. Maybe it stirs up some negative emotions, like the way a politician has the audacity to inflict harm, or a man has the audacity to explain kickboxing to the woman about to teach the class. But the writing we’re most interested in explores transformative audaciousness: the unapologetic embracing of the self, warts and all. Is it audacious to be naked? To use your body and let your body be used, however you want? To block an intersection with a sacred fire and sing? Is it audacious to be joyful and steady despite all the bullshit? To admit defeat? To say “fuck” in front of a child, or to tuck them in and read them a story even though no one ever did it for you? However you interpret our theme, the one aspect these submissions should have in common is bravery. This shouldn’t be easy, or comfortable; change never is.

Before submitting, please read our About section to see if your work fits within Room’s mandate, then refer to the Submission Guidelines on how to format your work. We are an international feminist magazine, and encourage writing and art submitted to us from all over the world.

Underrepresented writers—including but not exclusive to women, trans men, Two Spirit and non-binary writers who are Black, Indigenous, people of colour, queer, and/or disabled—are particularly encouraged to submit.

DEADLINE EXTENDED: January 31st, 2022

Valzhyna Mort and Michael Prior

On Tuesday, January 25th at 7:00PM ET, join us for a virtual reading featuring poets Valzhyna Mort and Michael Prior. Moderated by Carolyn Forché.

About Valzhyna Mort
Valzhyna Mort is a poet and translator born in Minsk, Belarus. She is the author of three poetry collections, Factory of Tears (Copper Canyon Press 2008), Collected Body (Copper Canyon Press 2011) and, mostly recently, Music for the Dead and Resurrected (FSG, 2020), which won the Griffin Poetry Prize. Mort is a recipient of fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Amy Clampitt residency, and the Civitella Raineri residency. Her work has been honored with the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry and the Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, New Yorker, Poetry, Poetry Review, Poetry International, Prairie Schooner, Granta, Gulf Coast, White Review, and many more. With Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris, Mort co-edited Gossip and Metaphysics: Russian Modernist Poems and Prose. Mort teaches at Cornell University and writes in English and Belarusian.

About Michael Prior
Michael Prior is a writer and teacher born in Vancouver, Canada. He is the author of two books of poems: Burning Province (McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House, 2020), which won the Canada-Japan Literary Award and the BC & Yukon Book Prizes’ Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and Model Disciple (Véhicule Press, 2016). Prior is the recent recipient of fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, the Jerome Foundation, and Hawthornden Literary Retreat. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Republic, Narrative Magazine, the Sewanee Review, PN Review, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, and elsewhere. He is an Assistant Professor of English and an ACM Mellon Faculty Fellow at Macalester College.

January 24, 2022

From “Baalbeck”

Sarah Riggs, translated from the French written by Etel Adnan

When no one is waiting for us
any longer, there’s
death,
so faithful.

Broken souls are not anonymous,
no more than the geometry
reserved for my naked feet.

There are moments when
the past ceases to be a form
of the present.
Rain and tears
Look alike.

Syria has always been the mother
of chaos. A land parallel to
all the others. In the epiphany
of a sun to come,
breathless.

25
The olive tree in Delphi,
next to the temple of Sikiyon,
remembers the oracle
saying that

somewhere in the plain linking
the Red Sea to the Dead Sea,
music will
displace the sky.

26
Ruins are relics.
The lineage being of little importance, we’re related to them.

Notes on the Poem
Our Poem of the Week features our first Translation Talks guest, Sarah Riggs, winner of the 2020 Griffin Poetry Prize for Time (Nightboat Books), translated from the French written by Etel Adnan.

Of the collection the judges said: “‘I say that I’m not afraid/of dying because I haven’t/ yet had the experience/ of death’ writes Etel Adnan in the opening poem to Time. What is astonishing here is how she manages to give weariness its own relentless energy. We are pulled quickly through this collection – each poem, only a breath, a small measure of the time that Adnan is counting. Every breath is considered, measured, observant – perceiving even ‘a crack in the/ texture of the day.’ If Adnan is correct and ‘writing comes from a dialogue/ with time’ then this is a conversation the world should be leaning into, listening to a writer who has earned every right to be listened to.”

Don’t miss Sarah Riggs’ conversation with Khaled Mattawa on Thursday, January 27th at 7pm ET. Translation Talks is a new series of conversations about translation and poetry where shortlisted and winning authors are invited to discuss their craft in company of other poets and translators. Register here.